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He was born in Bremen, Germany. His parents were Nathan Abraham, a Jewish religion teacher (1842 – 1915) and his wife (and cousin) Ida (1847 – 1929).[2] His studies in medicine enabled him to take a position at the Burghölzli Swiss Mental Hospital, where Eugen Bleuler practiced. The setting of this hospital initially introduced him to the psychoanalysis of Carl Gustav Jung.

Karl Abraham studied the role of infant sexuality in character development and mental illness and, like Freud, suggested that if psychosexual development is fixated at some point, mental disorders will likely emerge. He described the personality traits and psychopathology that result from the oral and anal stages of development (1921;1924a).

In the oral stage of development, the first relationships children have with objects (caretakers) determine their subsequent relationship to reality. Oral satisfaction can result in self-assurance and optimism, whereas oral fixation can lead to pessimism and depression. Moreover, a person with an oral fixation will present a disinclination to take care of him/herself and will require others to look after him/her. This may be expressed through extreme passivity (corresponding to the oral benign suckling substage) or through a highly active oral-sadistic behaviour (corresponding to the later sadistic biting substage) (1924a).

In the anal stage, when the training in cleanliness starts too early, conflicts may result between a conscious attitude of obedience and an unconscious desire for resistance. This can lead to traits such as frugality, orderliness and obstinacy, as well as to obsessional neurosis as a result of anal fixation (Abraham, 1921). In addition, Abraham based his understanding of manic-depressive illness on the study of the painter Segantini: an actual event of loss is not itself sufficient to bring the psychological disturbance involved in melancholic depression. This disturbance is linked with disappointing incidents of early childhood; in the case of men always with the mother (Abraham, 1911). This concept of the prooedipal “bad” mother was a new development in contrast to Freud’s oedipal mother and paved the way for the theories of Melanie Klein (May-Tolzmann, 1997).

Another important contribution is his work “A short study of the Development of the Libido” (1924b), where he elaborated on Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917) and demonstrated the vicissitudes of normal and pathological object relations and reactions to object loss.

Moreover, Abraham investigated child sexual trauma and, like Freud, proposed that sexual abuse was common among psychotic and neurotic patients. Furthermore, he argued (1907) that dementia praecox is associated with child sexual trauma, based on the relationship between hysteria and child sexual trauma demonstrated by Freud.

Abraham (1920) also showed interest in cultural issues. He analyzed various myths suggesting their relation to dreams (1909) and wrote an interpretation of the spiritual activities of the Egyptian monotheistic Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (1912).

Abraham, K.(1907). On the significance of Sexual Trauma in Childhood for the Symptomatology of Dementia Praecox. In Hilda, C., Abraham, M.D.(Ed) (1955). Clinical Papers and Essays on Psycho-Analysis. London : The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Abraham, K.(1909). Dreams and Myths : A study in folk-Psychology. In Hilda, C., Abraham, M.D.(Ed) (1955). Clinical Papers and Essays on Psycho-Analysis. London : The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Abraham, K.(1911). Giovanni Segantini : A Psycho-analytical Study. In Hilda, C., Abraham, M.D.(Ed) (1955). Clinical Papers and Essays on Psycho-Analysis. London : The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Abraham, K. (1912). Amenhotep IV. Psycho-analytical Contributions Towards the understanding of his Personality and of the Monotheistic Cult of Aton. . In Hilda, C., Abraham, M.D.(Ed) (1955). Clinical Papers and Essays on Psycho-Analysis. London : The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Abraham, K. (1920). The Cultural Significance of Psycho-analysis. In Hilda, C., Abraham, M.D.(Ed) (1955). Clinical Papers and Essays on Psycho-Analysis. London : The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Abraham, K (1921). Contributions to the theory of the anal character. In Stein, D.J, Stone, M. H. (Ed) (1997). Essential papers on obsessive-compulsive disorders. New York: New York University Press.